Development Theories

Harry Truman’s Speech after World War 2

The United States is pre-eminent among nations in the development of industrial and scientific techniques. The material resources
which we can afford to use for the assistance of other peoples are limited. But our imponderable resources in technical knowledge are
constantly growing and are inexhaustible. I believe that we should make available to peace-loving peoples the benefits of our store of
technical knowledge in order to help them realize their aspirations for a better life. And, in cooperation with other nations, we should
foster capital investment in areas needing development. Our aim should be to help the free peoples of the world, through their own
efforts, to produce more food, more clothing, more materials for housing, and more mechanical power to lighten their burdens. We
invite other countries to pool their technological resources in this undertaking. Their contributions will be warmly welcomed. This
should be a cooperative enterprise in which all nations work together through the United Nations and its specialized agencies
wherever practicable. It must be a worldwide effort for the achievement of peace, plenty, and freedom. With the cooperation of
business, private capital, agriculture, and labor in this country, this program can greatly increase the industrial activity in other nations
and can raise substantially their standards of living. Such new economic developments must be devised and controlled to benefit the
peoples of the areas in which they are established. Guarantees to the investor must be balanced by guarantees in the interest of the
people whose resources and whose labor go into these developments. The old imperialism--exploitation for foreign profit--has no place
in our plans. What we envisage is a program of development based on the concepts of democratic fair-dealing. All countries, including
our own, will greatly benefit from a constructive program for the better use of the world's human and natural resources. Experience
shows that our commerce with other countries expands as they progress industrially and economically. Greater production is the key
to prosperity and peace. And the key to greater production is a wider and more vigorous application of modern scientific and technical
knowledge. Only by helping the least fortunate of its members to help themselves can the human family achieve the decent, satisfying
life that is the right of all people. Democracy alone can supply the vitalizing force to stir the peoples of the world into triumphant action,
not only against their human oppressors, but also against their ancient enemies-- hunger, misery, and despair.
Development

Growing feeling that development was not just about economic gains and per
capita income. It is not just about conflict resolution, peacekeeping and poverty
reduction.

Development demands a social transformation: in norms and values. Introduction

of new social, economic and political values.
Labeling:
The 3 nation theory Post WW II: The Third World was still
poor.
Modernity is Development
Modernization Theories
Development as Good.

Communism as false philosophy.

Development through

technological innovation,

scientific innovation, rational action.

Development as improvement.
What is Development

According to Alan Thomas (2000), the term Development can be used as a :

1. Vision: How a desirable society should be.

2. Historical Process: Social change that takes place over a long time due to
inevitable processes.
3. Action: Deliberate efforts to change things for the better.
Development Theories in Classical Sociology

Auguste Comte

Emile Durkheim

Herbert Spencer

Karl Marx

Max Weber
Markers of Development
● Gross Domestic Product per capita:
Value of all goods and services
produced within a country over a given
period of time.
● Social Markers
● Less Religious, More scientific.
● Economic Development: which is
different from economic growth
(Amartya Sen)
● Human Development: Empowerment
Sustainable Development

Used by Brundtland Commission: “Development that meets the needs of the

present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own
needs”.

Meet human needs while preserving the environment for future generations.
Five Stages of Economic Growth: W. W. Rostow
Five Stages of Economic Growth: W. W. Rostow

1. Traditional Society: This stage is characterized by a subsistent, agricultural-based economy with intensive
labor and low levels of trading, and a population that does not have a scientific perspective on the world and
technology.
2. Preconditions to Take-off: Here, a society begins to develop manufacturing and a more
national/international—as opposed to regional—outlook.
3. Take-off: Rostow describes this stage as a short period of intensive growth, in which industrialization
begins to occur, and workers and institutions become concentrated around a new industry.
4. Drive to Maturity: This stage takes place over a long period of time, as standards of living rise, the use of
technology increases, and the national economy grows and diversifies.
5. Age of High Mass Consumption: At the time of writing, Rostow believed that Western countries, most
notably the United States, occupied this last "developed" stage. Here, a country's economy flourishes in a
capitalist system, characterized by mass production and consumerism.
Critique of
Modernization Theory

Viewing through the

Western lens.
Dependency Theory
● Emerged as a critique to Modernization theory which claimed that all societies progress through similar
stages of development. They say that at some time in the past, today's developed areas were in a situation
that is similar to that faced by today's underdeveloped areas. Therefore, the task of helping the
underdeveloped areas out of poverty is to accelerate them along the supposed common path of
development by various means, such as investment, technology transfers, and closer integration into the
world market.

● Dependency theory rejected this idea, arguing that underdeveloped countries are not merely primitive
versions of developed countries; rather they have unique features and structures of their own. They are
weaker members in a world market economy and the developed nations were never in an analogous
position. They never had to exist under the patronage of more powerful countries than themselves.
● Neo Colonialism: term popularised by the former President of Ghana: Kwame Nkumrah
● Dependency theorists argued, in opposition to free market economists,that underdeveloped countries
needed to reduce their connectedness with the world market so that they might pursue their own path,
more in keeping with their own needs, and less dictated by external pressures.
Dependency Theory

Hans Singer and Raul Prebisch, the prominent dependency theorists, observed that the terms of trade for
underdeveloped countries, relative to the developed countries, had deteriorated over time. The underdeveloped countries
were able to purchase fewer and fewer manufactured goods from the developed countries in exchange for a given quantity
of their raw materials exports. This idea is known as the Singer-Prebisch thesis.
Dependency Theory: Basic Premise

1. Poor nations provide natural resources and cheap labor. They are export destinations for obsolete technology and for
markets for the wealthy nations, without which, the latter could not have the standard of living they [Link]
nations are at a disadvantage in their market interactions with wealthier nations.
2. Wealthy nations actively perpetuate a state of dependence by various means. This influencemaybemult&mted,
involving economics,media control,politics, banking and finance, education, culture, sport, and all aspects of human
resource development, including the recruitment and training of workers.
3. Wealthy nations actively counter all attempts made by dependent nations to resist their influences by means of
economic sanctions, and, possibly, by the use of military force. The poverty of the countries in the periphery is not
because they are not integrated into the world system, or not fully integrated as is often argued by free market
economists, but because of how they are integrated into the system.
Dependency Theory
Dependency Theory: Definitions

● dependency characterizes the international system as comprised of two sets of states, variously described as
dominant/dependent, center/periphery
● external forces are of singular importance to the economic activities within the dependent states. These external forces include
multinational corporations, international commodity markets, foreign assistance, communications, and any other means by
which the advanced industrialised countries can represent their economic interests abroad.
● the relations between dominant and dependent states are dynamic because the interactions between the two sets of states
tend to not only reinforce but also intensify the unequal patterns. Moreover, dependency is a very deep-seated historical
process, rooted in the internationalisation of capitalism.
 Dependency Theory: Propositions

1. “Underdevelopment” is a condition fundamentally different from “undevelopment”. The latter term simply refers to a
condition in which resources are not being used. For example, the European colonists viewed the North American
continent as an undeveloped area: the land was not actively cultivated on a scale consistent with its potential.
Underdevelopment refers to a situation in which resources are being actively used, but used in a way which benefits
dominant states and not the poorer states in which the resources are found.

2. The distinction between underdevelopment and undevelopment places the poorer countries of the world in a
profoundly different historical context. These countries are not “behind” or “catching up” with the richer countries of
the world. They are not poor because they lagged behind the scientific transformations or the Enlightenment values
of the European states. They are poor because they were coercively integrated into the European economic system
only as producers of raw materials or to serve as repositories of cheap labor, and were denied the opportunity to
market their resources in any way that competed with dominant states.
 Dependency Theory: Propositions

3. Dependency theory suggests that alternative uses of resources are preferable to the resource usage patterns imposed by
dominant states. There is no clear definition of what these preferred patterns might be, but some criteria are invoked. For example, one
of the dominant state practices most often criticised by dependency theorists is export agriculture. The criticism is that many poor
economies experience rather high rates of malnutrition even though they produce great amounts of food for export. Many dependency
theorists would argue that those agricultural lands should be used for domestic food production in order to reduce the rates of
malnutrition.

4. The preceding proposition can be amplified as follows: dependency theorists rely upon a belief that there exists a clear “national”
economic interest which can and should be articulated for each country. In this respect, dependency theory actually shares a similar
theoretical concern with realism. What distinguishes the dependency perspective is that its proponents believe that this national
interest can only be satisfied by addressing the needs of the poor within a society, rather than the satisfaction of corporate or
governmental needs. Trying to determine what is the “best” for the poor is a difficult analytical problem. Dependency theorists have not
yet articulated an operational definition of the national economic interest.
Dependency Theory: Propositions

5. The diversion of resources over time (and one must remember that dependent relationships have persisted since the European
expansion beginning in the fifteenth century) is maintained not only by the power of dominant States, but also through the power of
elites in the dependent States. Dependency theorists argue that these elites maintain a dependent relationship because their own
private interests coincide with the interests of the dominant States. These elites are typically trained in the dominant States and share
similar values and culture with the elites in dominant States. Thus, in a very real sense, a dependency relationship is a “voluntary”
relationship. One need not argue that the elites in a dependent State are consciously betraying the interests of their poor; the elites
sincerely believe that the key to economic development lies in following the prescriptions of liberal economic doctrine.
World Systems Theory: Immanuel Wallerstein

For Wallerstein, "a world-system is a social system,

one that has boundaries, structures, member groups,
rules of legitimation, and coherence. Its life is made
up of the conflicting forces which hold it together by
tension and tear it apart as each group seeks
eternally to remold it to its advantage. It has the
characteristics of an organism, in that is has a life-
span over which its characteristics change in some
respects and remain stable in others... Life within it is
largely self-contained, and the dynamics of its
development are largely internal" (Wallerstein, p.
347). A world-system is what Wallerstein terms a
"world- economy", integrated through the market
rather than a political center, in which two or more
regions are interdependent with respect to necessities
like food, fuel, and protection, and two or more
polities compete for domination without the
emergence of one single center forever.
World Systems Theory

In his own first definition, Wallerstein (1974) said that a

world-system is a "multicultural territorial division of
labor in which the production and exchange of basic
goods and raw materials is necessary for the everyday
life of its inhabitants." This division of labor refers to the
forces and relations of production of the world economy
as a whole and it leads to the existence of two
interdependent regions: core and periphery. These are
geographically and culturally different, one focusing on
labor-intensive, and the other on capital-intensive
production. (Goldfrank, 2000). The core-periphery
relationship is structural. Semi-peripheral states acts as
a buffer zone between core and periphery, and has a
mix of the kinds of activities and institutions that exist
on them (Skocpol, 1977).
World Systems Theory
Among the most important structures of the current world-system is a power hierarchy between core and
periphery, in which powerful and wealthy "core" societies dominate and exploit weak and poor peripheral
societies. Technology is a central factor in the positioning of a region in the core or the periphery.
Advanced or developed countries are the core, and the less developed are in the periphery. Peripheral
countries are structurally constrained to experience a kind of development that reproduces their
subordinate status (Chase-Dunn and Grimes, (1995). The differential strength of the multiple states within
the system is crucial to maintain the system as a whole, because strong states reinforce and increase the
differential flow of surplus to the core zone (Skocpol, 1977). This is what Wallerstein called unequal
exchange, the systematic transfer of surplus from semi- proletarian sectors in the periphery to the high-
technology, industrialized core (Goldfrank, 2000). This leads to a process of capital accumulation at a
global scale, and necessarily involves the appropriation and transformation of peripheral surplus.
The current world-economy is characterized by regular cyclical rhythms, which provide the basis of
Wallerstein's periodization of modern history (Goldfrank, 2000). After our current stage, Wallerstein
envisions the emergence of a socialist world-government, which is the only-alternative world-system that
could maintain a high level of productivity and change the distribution, by integrating the levels of political
and economic decision-making.
(Carlos A. Martínez-Vela 2001)
Samir Amin: Metropolitan Core-Marginalized Periphery

Samir Amin in his work titled, Unequal Development: An Essay on the Social Formations of Peripheral Capitalism (1976),
observes that historical analysis of radical dependency theory represented by Frank is too generalized. Frank’s theory fails
to show unevenness of the development of the peripheral states, ranging from the backwardness of Ethiopia to the growing
industries of Asian Tigers.

● Harped on the “political” rather than “economic” reasons for the development of underdevelopment.
● Value flows from Core to Peripheral countries: value related to labour as well as resources.
● International division of labour
● Uneven distribution of wealth geographically
● Creative Marxist
Dependency Theory: Criticism

1. does not provide any substantive empirical evidences to support its arguments. There are few examples that are provided but
many exceptions are there which do not fit in with their core periphery theory, like the newly emerged industrial countries of
South East Asia.
2. are highly abstract and tend to use homogenising categories such as developed and underdeveloped, which do not fully
capture the variations within these categories.
3. the dependency school considers ties with multinational corporations as detrimental, while one view has been that they are
important means of transfer of technology.
4. they base their arguments on received notions such as nation–state, capitalism and industrialisation. Some of the Eurocentric
biases are inherited in these theories of dependency school: for example they assume that industrialisation and possession of
industrial capital are crucial requisites for economic progress. There is an inability to think beyond the state as the primary and
essential agent of economic development. Also there is a Eurocentric bias in overlooking or de-emphasising of production
undertaken by women, and in not realising the hazardous implications for the environment of industralisation and over-
exploitation of resources.
5. they do not reflect the changed socio-economic and political situations of the contemporary world.